The secrets to great night photography

Night photography can be incredibly rewarding, and it's a great way to improve your general photographic skills. So what do you need to think about?

Equipment:

• A DSLR or Mirrorless camera with manual mode.
• A fast lens
• A tripod
• A Remote Shutter Release
• Extra batteries for cold conditions

Camera settings:

• Use the widest aperture you can
• Experiment with shutter speed
• Experiment with ISO (to minimise noise)
• Use manual focus

Light and exposure

• Get familiar with your cameras' limits in low light
• Be aware of light pollution and choose your site accordingly
• Experiment with light painting and light trails
• Experiment with bracketing to improve dynamic range (may be used in stacked images in post-processing)

Composition

• Think about how to use foreground objects creatively
• Use the rule of thirds and leading lines

Challenges

• Use noise reduction techniques when shooting and in post-production
• Stabilise your camera to avoid motion blur
• Plan for changes in the weather
• Use heaters or other methods to minimise condensation in the lens

Have fun!

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Transcript

>> Graham: 0:08

Foreign. Okay. And welcome to another podcast. In this podcast I'm going to talk about night photography. So that could be astrophotography, that's certainly part of it. But also just shooting in the dark and the kind of things to think about. So before I dive into that, please, please remember to like and subscribe and, we will get started. So where I want to start first of all is the camera, and equipment obviously that you're going to use. So first of all, with the camera body itself, I definitely recommend either using a DSLR or a mirrorless camera. ideally you want manual mode. You might also have a bulb mode. So if you're not familiar with those, and if you aren't familiar, it's a good idea to get familiar with them. So these are modes on the camera. So I've spoken about aperture priority, shutter speed priority. Well, manual is doing everything manually and not using the automation in the camera at all. Although with a lot of cameras as you're setting up in manual, it will give you a warning that you might be underexposing or overexposing or whatever. But obviously with, when you start getting into things like night photography, where you're likely to be using longer exposures, what the camera thinks you need to be set to is probably less reliable than in more sort of general purpose photography because that's what it's really designed for. So manual is where you control everything yourself. And depending on the camera you're using, generally in manual you can set exposure times up to around, 30 seconds. So it will be that kind of duration if you want to go longer than that. And there is a definite caveat with that one because, with digital cameras you start to invite trouble when you do that. But nonetheless, if you want to go longer than that, this is where you want bulb mode. And this is simply where you have an external shutter release and you manually, or probably these days you can do it automatically. But essentially with an external shutter release, you will open the shutter, lock the shutter release, and then you can leave that shutter open for as long as you need to. So that gives you, pretty much an indefinite, opening of the, of the shutter. So that's the first thing. Then of course you've got your lens. So the one noticeable thing about night photography is there's a lot less light than you would usually have. So ideally you want a lens with a wide aperture, a fast lens. So Ideally something like F 2.8 or if you can go lower to an F2 or even lower Than that, so much the better because obviously with a larger lens, with a fast lens you can take in much more light and that gives you in most cases a better image. however what you may be shooting might be time dependent. So there's always a bit of a trade off because you, if you over, if you're overexposing, basically all you do is drop your ISO down which is a good thing. So definitely go for fast lens if you've got one and use that. Now another bit of equipment you're likely to want to have is a tripod. Now I've done some Astro in Sydney which involved sort of getting up at about three in the morning and heading off to a lighthouse, where there was a great view of the Milky Way when it came up. And one of the things I was lugging with me was a tripod and I use a fairly sturdy one because I was looking at exposure times of around 20 seconds, maybe slightly shorter. And you really want your tripod to be pretty solid when you're doing a long exposure like that. Now there are some tricks you can do to make your tripod even more stable. If you can get a hook or something in the bottom of the column that has the camera on the top of it. if you've got a hook there you can hang a bag. And if it's pretty heavy bag that's good because what it does, it adds a lot of weight, it adds stability to the tripod. And also remember the tips I give about using tripods. I remember doing a podcast quite a while ago and even when I was doing the magazine I did a little article on tripod. So the way you need to set your tripod up. So tripod by definition has three legs. The leg that's pointing away from you or one of your, one of the legs should be pointing away from you as you're standing behind the camera. Which means that that leg is forward and underneath the lens of the camera. So hopefully that's making sense. If you're setting up your tripod. The sort of short part of the tripod where the two legs don't stick out so much, that's what you want to be standing between those two and where the leg is stepping out, sticking out further, that needs to be underneath your lens. Particularly if you're using a longer lens. what that does, it gives you a bit more stability. If you are using a longer lens and you don't set the tripod up that way, what you're doing is you're likely to push the center of gravity of the whole assembly past the point where the whole tripod assembly will tip over. So hopefully that's making sense. But that is my hot tip for was two tips there for using tripods, but definitely make sure the forward leg is underneath the lens and if you can add a bit of weight to the center underneath so that you, you're dropping that center of gravity even lower, you're, you're making it a more solid arrangement. The bag idea is actually particularly important if you're using a lightweight tripod. I would definitely recommend that, there's also the remote shutter release. So you may already be using that if you want. If you're in bulb mode, you would need something to manage the shutter release. So that might be a Bluetooth type thing. I'm a bit of a cable person, so I've got a cable hanging off mine. And some of them are fairly sophisticated. You can set up, shutter durations on the remote. some of them you can do it on the camera. And so it's a good idea to have a look at what your camera does in that particular area, particularly if this is something you want to get into a lot more. But the key thing is to have a shutter release that is off the body of the camera. And the reason is very simply that if you're using a dslr, the movement of the lens flipping up when you hit the shutter button, that will always introduce some sort of movement. probably not very much, but there's likely to be a little bit depends on the camera you're using. If it's a pro camera, you really shouldn't expect anything. but the idea, but what will happen is as you press the shutter button, that movement of your hand is likely to move the camera very slightly. So that's really why you want the remote release, so that the you don't have that pressing down directly onto the camera body. another thing you can do, to now this if you don't have a tripod. But I think you're probably pushing your luck if you don't have one. And that's to brace the camera somehow and then push down on the shutter button and hold it down until you hear the shutter close. But obviously if you're doing a manual release, that won't work so well. So you really need to be off the camera. And of course you've got three second timer so that you can press the shutter button but there'll be a three second delay before the shutter actually operates. But the key thing really is to have a remote shutter release. So I can't really emphasize that enough. Now the other thing to think about is batteries because if you are doing a lot of long exposures on cold nights, particularly if you're using a mirrorless camera where you're using the display quite a lot, you're going to be chewing up your battery charge a fair bit. Now you again you need to get to know your camera and get, get some idea of how long a charged battery is likely to last in certain, in different conditions really. but it might be a good idea, a bit of an insurance policy to just have an extra battery or two that you can just switch over. Okay. So that's the equipment and there might be other things. So if you're doing Astro, there is kit you can buy that allows the tripod or it sits on the tripod and it tracks whatever you, you're pointing at. and essentially what I mean by that is it's changing the position of the camera very slowly to compensate for the rotation of the Earth. So with that kit I've got some experience with one bit of kit. And the key thing to do is put in your longitude and latitude so that it, know where you are on, on the Earth. and that way it's got a fighting chance of just moving the camera. But what it does, it means that the the camera rotates very, very slowly to compensate for what from our perspective looks like movement in stars. So you'll start to get star trails developing. And what I mean by that is if you look at the stars and then you do a long exposure, you gradually see that the stars appear to move. Obviously that's movement of the Earth. But the stars will begin to move and they'll create little trails. each of them will create a little trail, while on the final image because the shutters open. So star trails begin after about 20 seconds. So if you've not done this before, they're likely to appear much faster than you expect. I'm going to talk about other issues related to all of this. But when you think of those really those images with circles basically, the, the where someone's done massive star trails, they are usually an assembly of multiple images. So because there are other issues you need to think of. However just for now, the main thing to think about is whether or not you want to invest in one of these trackers and therefore you. And they'll be battery powered. You need to make sure they're fully charged. they usually have some extra weight associated with them. so the one I've got, and I forgot who made it actually, but it's got a one kilo weight just as a counterweight for the, the tracker. So that stuff is not, it's not light and if you've got a hike a long way or up a cliff or something like that. As I say, I did some photography in Sydney on basically it was at the top of a cliff but I had to walk up this quite steep path to get there. And also walk along the beach and avoid walking through big spider webs and things like that. just remember that if it's a lot of weight you do have to carry it there and back. So make sure you can do that. and the other thing I would say actually if you're, if you are going to be doing Astro and you're up for a few hours, I have. The thing I didn't do is take a chair of any sort. And I was so my legs were very tired after about four hours, of standing and having, as I say, having to get up to the top of this cliff and then come back again. I was actually pretty glad to sit down in the, in the car when I got back. So whatever you can carry. But have a think about all of those things on the kit side in terms of camera settings. So with aperture, generally you'll want to use the widest aperture you've got. obviously that will give you the narrowest depth of field, but it does depend on the focal length of the lens you're using, just what impact that has and again how you're using your foreground. So we'll talk about composition in a moment. But generally speaking you're going to be using the widest aperture because the key thing you want to do is, is to gather as much light as you can, into the, into onto your sensor or onto your film. If you're using film, shutter speeds, that will likely be a case of trial and error if you've not done it before. So you may well be working with exposure times of 10 to 30 seconds. But as I've so that, that would allow you to work within manual in most cameras. So again you've got to check what your camera will do. But if you're in manual mode, you can generally set shutter speeds up to 30 seconds. but if you're, if you are doing a bit of Astro, remember you may well be getting star trails when you're up at the 30. So you might need to think about doing shorter exposures, maybe 10 to 15 seconds. And you're then looking at how much lighter you're getting, which brings us on to the next thing and that's your ISO, your sensitivity. So generally, again, if you haven't done it before, this will also be trial and error. But start with something like an ISO 800 or 1600 and then work up from there. Now you might think, well, why not just go to the highest ISO the camera will support? Well, fair enough, because that makes the camera very sensitive. But unfortunately what also happens, as you increase the sensitivity, you start increasing noise. And if you're likely to have large areas of one color and that might be dark areas, you may well start to see pixels appearing quite early. so if you're in general photography, if you're photographing the scene that has a lot of things going on, lots of different colors, shapes, all of that, if you have got noise in there, it's generally less noticeable. Whereas if you're shooting against, say shooting a landscape and there's a lot of sky, ah, you'll see. So if you've got a light blue sky, for example, you'll see the pixels appearing quite early. because that, where you have a solid block of color, they tend to be more obvious. So noise is definitely an issue with Astro. Some cameras are really good at high isos. I was at a launch of a Leica camera, ah, a few years ago now, but they were sitting up, I think it was 32,000 and it looked really good. So it does really depend on the camera you've got. I, I can definitely say that my Canons are not that good. and often with DSLRs, with regular DSLRs mirrorless, probably when you start pushing the ISO, that's when you start to see limitations in the performance of the camera. And I hate to say it, but there are occasions for sure when smartphones actually have better performance. Probably you're not going to want to use a smartphone for Astro, but why not? You know, if you're there, if you can set one up, if you've got a smaller tripod, you can just set up with you. Why not experiment with a smartphone as well as your main gear? If you're taking Both up, and then finally focus. The chances are you are going to be focusing on infinity. So just switch the manual focus and just switch to infinity. And just do some test shots. Just make sure everything is looking the way you want it. but you don't need manual focus. And the chances are it won't work that well anyway if you've got very low light. autofocus systems do need a certain amount of light in which to operate. So if there's no light there, they're going to struggle anyway. So you might save yourself a bit of time and a bit of battery power by switching to manual focus and then just manually switching to infinity. next thing to think about is, just light and exposure. So first of all, with your camera, this is a good exercise to just learn your camera's limits. And so that would be your camera lens combination with both low light and a high ISO. Another thing to think about is light pollution. So if you are doing some astro, ideally you want to go somewhere where there is very little light pollution. So if you live in a town, that's likely to be very tricky. in Republic of Ireland they have designated dark areas. So these are usually like parks, like national park type setups, but they are dark. You're not allowed to have light at night and that simply to allow you to see what is actually amazing. If you've never seen the night sky without clouds and with no light around, it's you definitely want to, you owe yourself to have a look at that because it looks really amazing. So you need to basically get a location where there's no light pollution or you keep that to an absolute minimum. Something else if you're doing light painting. So this is where you again will be doing a long exposure, maybe 10 seconds or so. and you have a subject generally and you have somebody else behind them moving a light. So again, this is something I've, I've done. some of the guys who do this who specialize in it will set up their own kit. so for example, they might have a series of light bulbs, driven by a battery on a piece of wood. So they're equally spaced. And then they'll walk behind somebody moving this whole assembly around. But it gives you a bunch of parallel lines and it's almost like a music stave, things like that. So if you can go along to one of those light painting workshops, I do recommend it, even if it's not something you're Particularly thinking about doing it's definitely worth it for the experience. It will get you to learn to use your camera in low light situations. So you really will need to get on top of your exposure triangle and you'll learn how. You'll probably learn a bit more about your lenses and how the camera works when you start pushing the ISO up. So light painting is one where you'd still need a tripod. So what I've said is definitely true. You probably want a manual release on the shutter so you can just hold the shutter open while whoever is doing the light painting is painting and then see what you get. the other thing to think about is dynamic range. for most of what I've done it's not really applicable and dynamic range when I'm referring to there really is just bracketing. but you, you could try just under, under or overexposing or over, under and overexposing. My maybe a third of a stop or a half stop, might be worth doing it. So if you do an Astro, for example, just do a sequence of the same shot, basically same exposure time, so let's say 10 seconds, do it at what seems like a good aperture and then just set the camera to underexpose and then overexposed by to say a third or a half of the stop, and see what you get. The other reason for doing that is it might give you something that, where you can layer up different exposures in post processing. But it's something to explore as it's a bit more of a specialty. Okay, I'm going to really briefly talk about composition and then wind things up. So the chances are that what you're shooting, if it's the stars, then they're a long way away. But you may have something in the foreground you can use. So there's a lighthouse in where ah, I was shooting and that was quite good because I was timing. lighthouses have a particular sequence of light and dark that they operate so that somebody out at sea knows which lighthouse they're looking at. So if you're not aware it's kind of like Morse code but well with lights and you might be able to shoot in the dark periods or expose to a point where you've got one part of the exposure where the light is on but then most of it is off. So if you're in a 10 second exposure, you might get three seconds on for example and then the rest of it off. it's worth experimenting with that as well. If you're doing exposure where you have something moving, if you're doing traffic or you're doing, maybe a landmark at night, that kind of thing. think about, composition. Use rule of thirds, but also look at what's happening with the lights. You can do a relatively fast shot where you freeze everything and where you can have light trails from cars. you could set yourself up on a bridge over, a highway or something and just shoot light trails. So there's lots of things I've spoken a fair bit about Astro, and I've spoken about light painting. But of course there's many other ways you can do photography at night, that don't require anything special or maybe don't require you to walk a long way or lug gear along the way. But I do recommend that you, you do have a tripod. And, you do, it's a great discipline as well. It helps you to learn more about your camera. And I think it does expand your sort of creative portfolio. So think about rule of thirds. Think about what's in the foreground, what's in the background, if there is anything in the background. And then of course you've got things like leading lines you can use to just create more interest. And, you might be up high shooting down on a scene. so think about your angle, the angle between you and your subject. So, just finally, because I did say I would talk about it, just the issues to think about. So noise is definitely one in digital cameras. And what it is, it's just the. I can put anyone who's really pedantic about this is going to take me apart. But essentially electronic systems do create noise. it gets picked up by the sensor. The more sensitive the sensor is, so the higher your ISO, the more noise it's going to pick up. Also the longer you've got the exposure going, the more noise you're going to be exposed to. Also the electronics themselves, as you do longer exposure, create heat and that also generates noise. So on the noise side, things are pretty much stacked against you. And you really do need to try and keep the exposures as long as you can get away with, and you may. So you're going to have to experiment. I think the key thing about this, the one word I keep coming back to is experimentation. And that's really what you need to think about. Obviously motion blur is an issue. So I've, you know, recommended a tripod and use a cable release that will should kill that. if you are planning to do a landscape or a, ah, starry sky or something like that, just obviously be aware of the weather. And I do recommend if you can just have a look around in the daylight, just sort of plan where you're going to shoot from what you might be able to take in what might be in the frame that would, would add to the the overall image. And finally, if you are in a, cold environment, do think about how you prevent your lens fogging up so it might be warm the glass up. There are lens heaters, specialized things like that that you might want to think about. Okay, so that does cover what I was hoping to talk about in this podcast. I, hope you found it interesting. Let me know if you do. If there is anything you would like me to talk about, please let me know because I have put together podcasts specifically because somebody has requested it or come back with a question and I thought a podcast would be, one of the ways to answer it and hopefully a good way. So please let me know and I will speak to you again in the next, podcast. Bye for now. Well, I hope you enjoyed that. Now, I just want to say thank you for tuning in and joining me in the Wildlife and Adventure Photography podcast. If you have enjoyed today's episode, please give me a, like a subscribe, maybe tell your friends, and by all means leave a comment. And if there is a subject you would like me to cover in the future, please let me know and I'll, be very happy to do my best. So thanks again for joining me and I look forward to seeing you again. Next podcast. Bye for now.